The modern market is very rich and vast. Almost any product on it is presented in such an assortment that your eyes are wide and you can’t collect them, and it’s not possible to choose at all. Especially in a situation if you are poorly versed in what you need to buy. So the interior doors - are they so different? So much so that without a detailed study of the issue, one cannot get to the point. What are good, for example, sliding interior doors?
What are the designs
We must immediately make a reservation: we are talking here exclusively about interior doors. External and corridor are not taken into account. Doors differ in the material from which they are made (wood and steel, glass and aluminum, etc.), in strength (blind and glazed), in manufacturing (panel and panel), in coating (veneered, laminated and others), in design , finally.
The latter in this case are of particular interest. In this category, it is important to know that doors are different in how they open. There are only two types of them - swing (which swing open forward or backward from the push) and sliding. What does it mean? Such doors seem to slide along a special guide along the wall. They just drive off to the side, like the door of a Gazelle minibus. These sliding interior doors are the subject of discussion.
Like swing doors, sliding doors have their advantages and disadvantages, their pros and cons. Nevertheless, it is they who are currently gaining more and more popularity, forcing them to "squeeze" their swinging "colleagues." Whatever one may say, if earlier the interior doors served to enclose the space, now quite often they are not installed for this at all - but simply as an element of the interior, part of the decor. Consequently, they should look presentable - obviously, in this sliding interior doors are ahead of swing counterparts.
Benefits
The first and indisputable advantage of this type of door is that it is thanks to their help that it is so easy to divide the space into several different zones. Hinged doors can not cope with this task, but partitions or accordions - as they say, "with a bang." Both of them are varieties of sliding doors, but this will be discussed in more detail below.
What can be separated from what? The possibilities for a fantasy flight are truly endless: in the combined bathroom, you can fence the toilet from the bath / shower, so you get a separate toilet and bathroom. In the room where the child lives, it is permissible to equip the sleeping and play areas, and if the area allows it, there is also a work and study room. These are just a couple of ideas - but in fact there are many more.
Another plus of interior sliding doors (pictured) is their, so to speak, invisibility. Swing doors conceal space, absorb it. With sliding, such embarrassment does not occur, on the contrary, they give a feeling of a large, enlarged area. And this, in turn, guarantees security. After all, if there is not enough free space, but there are a lot of people, sooner or later it can turn into an injury. Sliding interior doors allow easy access to other rooms. It is not possible to hit anyone with them when opening or closing.
The great advantage of this design is its lightness, simplicity and stability. The sliding door itself, unlike the swing door, will not open. However, it is not naive to believe that it is heavy and heavy - on the contrary, even a child can open it without making any special efforts. The door will not go along the guide back and forth, does not skew. Such designs are considered more durable, their service life is an order of magnitude longer than that of swing doors.
Another advantage of sliding interior doors for someone may not seem so obvious and important, but someone will undoubtedly make a proper impression and act as a decisive factor. It is about the appearance of the doors - it is precisely for the sliding representatives that the design is thought out, as they say, in the highest order. Whatever they use for their manufacture, as soon as they decorate, trying to draw the attention of potential buyers to the product in this way. Hinged doors, as a rule, are simpler and ascetic, so to speak.
disadvantages
Some people call the next moment negative, but it is hardly possible to seriously talk about it as a minus of sliding interior doors. It's about their novelty. Conservatives - people who are accustomed to the old, long familiar and understandable, argue that the system of swing doors has been worked out and studied over the years. As for the sliding structure, although it is more modern, it requires a detailed study, which is not very convenient for a certain category of customers. It is believed that the mechanism of sliding doors is more complex, it is more difficult to install them, there are more problems with them - and so on.
Some people talk about poor sound insulation, as well as the high price of the goods, but these shortcomings are doubtful - everyone has their own concept of high cost, noise. Therefore, these facts cannot be considered real, serious flaws, of course. But what really is the minus of such a design is that it is impossible to open the silently sliding door, because under the influence of the door's gravity the rails will somehow creak.
In addition, when planning to put such a door, it is necessary to allocate a certain space under it along the wall, where it will move. This is far from always possible, especially in small-sized apartments.
How to choose the right
There are four criteria that you should rely on when choosing sliding doors (photo presented). The first of them is the number of paintings on the door, in other words - the sash. There can be from one to four. By the way, here is another advantage over swing structures - they have a maximum of two flaps. As a rule, one or two leaves are enough for a house, but when you buy a similar door to the office, into a wide hall - in general, somewhere, where there is a large space - all three or four panels will be indispensable at once.
The second criterion is how the door opens. Here there are such options: sliding doors can be either built-in or overhead. The first, as you can easily guess, are built into the wall, "enter" into it. Accordingly, while still making repairs, it is necessary to build a niche in which the door will leave, and only then engage in finishing the entire wall.
Overhead doors are shifted parallel to the wall, which means that you must first make sure that there is enough space for this, and nothing hangs on this wall. Of these two possibilities, the first one looks more aesthetically pleasing, the second one is cheaper in cost and easier to install. Saving and accessibility or beauty is up to everyone to decide.
The third factor is how the door is attached. These are the so-called guides along which the mechanism moves. There are two options for their placement - either from above and below, or only from above. Only the upper mount is most common now, since it is easy to trip over the lower one, firstly, and secondly, it is a real storage for dust.
Finally, the last thing you should pay attention to when choosing a sliding door is the "parking". “Parking” is a section of the wall that borders the door when it is open. Such sites, as a rule, are one or two - and it is not necessary at all that their number will coincide with the number of door leaves. If it is one, then the canvases are shifted in one direction, if two - in different directions. Accordingly, single-leaf sliding mechanical doors in any situation will have only one parking place, but the rest have more options.
In addition to these four indicators, there are other factors that deserve special mention. First of all, it is soundproofing. Some materials, such as pine, have very good sound insulation, and if you purchase a door from this tree, you will not have to spend money on an additional device for absorbing noise.
The door decoration is also important - if it is natural, the product will please its owner longer. Not the least value is the price in relation to quality. Of course, if there are not too many funds, you will have to choose from sliding interior doors of economy class, but in this case it should be remembered that the quality of the products may be low.
You need to be wary if the cost of the door is very low - this indicates that the doors saved raw materials during production, which means there are voids inside it. Covering an inexpensive door will also not be natural, and its owner will be able to use such a design in less time than a more expensive one.
How are they arranged
The sliding door system is just two kinds. The first is called parallel-sliding. This means that it moves sideways parallel to the wall. The second name is a sliding-folding system. This is an accordion door consisting of several sections. Such a design loses first in sound insulation and durability. The design is often used simply as part of the interior.
Types of Sliding Doors
How many different doors are available on the market! Enumerate them - there are not enough fingers on the hands. Books, screens, accordions, compartments, cassette, radius - all share a similar mechanism. They move along rails installed, as already mentioned, either only from above, or from above and from below. The differences are more than enough. Let’s try to briefly go over at least some names.
Sliding doors are more reliable than folding doors (accordions). These include, for example:
- compartment - depending on the number of leaves, they are either in one or in two directions;
- cascading doors - have one non-moving leaf and several more movable leaves;
- interior doors - located inside the doorway, the doors move to each other;
- cassette doors - leaving to the side, do not remain visible, but as if hiding in a special niche;
- radius doors - have a rounded shape.
Folding structures include, for example, a screen, accordion, book and the like. All of them can have either one or two wings.
How much do you need?
Indeed, what is the advantage of more flaps? In fact, any design has both pros and cons. Single-leaf doors, for example, benefit from the fact that they are good for small spaces, because they are very compact. In addition, they can be attached both to the wall and to the ceiling.
But the double-leaf doors are more overall, they have a fairly wide opening, they are perfect for large rooms. Therefore, the number of paintings should be selected based on the space for which the door is required. By the way, they can be made to order with as many shutters as everyone wishes.
Automatic and manual
There are two types of sliding interior doors: manual - this means that they open and close manually, and automatic - a person works with a machine. A special sensor that responds to the appearance of people activates the mechanism. As a result, the door is open or, on the contrary, locked. Automatic sliding doors are much more convenient, but also much more expensive.
It is precisely because of the high cost that such structures are most often found not at all in houses and apartments, but in offices or stores. They are aimed at such spaces, which is reflected even in their advantages. Automatic sliding doors allow a very large flow of people to pass without creating congestion, they make it possible to penetrate through them with a large and heavy load, and prevent a large amount of frosty air from entering the room in winter. The service life of this design is two to three years.
Aluminum
This option, as a rule, is made using two guides - upper and lower. Sliding aluminum doors are quite popular due to the fact that they can be glazed without using special jumpers vertically and horizontally, which gives the doors a more modern and aesthetic appearance. They can be either folding or sliding, and their service life is extremely high.
Plastic
Another name for plastic doors is gantry. A similar name came from the English word portal, which means - the gate. Such doors fit perfectly into a small room - they visually expand it. In addition, sliding plastic doors occupy a minimum area in the open state. At the same time, they are quite tight, and they can also be made not entirely plastic, but partially using glass.
Glass
The indisputable advantage of sliding glass doors is the huge amount of light that they generously pass into the premises. Of course, they can be placed in any room, but for bathrooms and dressing rooms - that is, spaces without windows - they will do just fine.
Doors may not necessarily be made of glass - or not only of it. An original solution is to mount a mirror leaf in glass doors , when one part of the door is a mirror and the other is just glass. By the way, this option of combining several materials is very popular. The special favor among the customers was gained by glass sliding doors with photo printing.
Unfortunately, glass doors are not found very often in apartments. They are much more willing to put them in offices. This is largely due to the difficulty of their installation - it is advisable to design the installation of such doors at the construction stage of the building.
What do glass sliding doors look like? This is a single piece of glass cloth with a wooden or aluminum frame. Such a door does not allow noise at all, because in theory it is a good option for a nursery. But only in theory - in practice, installing such doors in a children's room is dangerous.
Coupe - A Popular Option
Sliding sliding doors do not require special presentation - they are quite popular and are known, probably, to everyone. As already mentioned, such doors belong to the sliding. They can be any size, any color, from any material. The main advantages of doors of this type, in addition to saving space, are the absence of thresholds that you can trip over, as well as the versatility of the design - sliding doors will fit any room.
However, there are compartment doors and cons. This is, first of all, the complete lack of insulation - there are cracks between the door and the doorway into which noise and cold air penetrate. In addition, for many citizens, the obvious disadvantage of this design will be its price.
Harmonic
These are the folding doors. Previously, accordions were made mainly of plastic, but now the customer is free to choose almost any material. Sliding accordion doors are much cheaper than sliding structures, but, as already mentioned, their service life, unfortunately, is also small. Just like a coupe, accordions will not provide sound and heat insulation to their owners. In addition, such doors are only suitable for standard rectangular openings. Very original is the fact that accordion doors are sometimes mounted without door frames.
Partitions
Another type of folding door is a sliding partition door. This is a great option in order to break the room into several separate zones. Such doors are ideal for a small one-room apartment. Partitions have an aluminum frame, they themselves are, as a rule, glass. They can move at least in one, at least in the other direction, but move completely without sound. Such designs can withstand temperatures well, they last quite a long time and have a very pleasant and affordable price.
These are just a few models from the existing variety of types of interior sliding doors. And everyone can choose a door to their taste and wallet!